One of the problems associated with thin film inductive heads arises from the need to deposit a second magnetic pole piece relative to a first magnetic pole piece previously deposited onto a substrate. If the width of the two pole pieces are made to be substantially equal, then any misregistration during the manufacturing processes of the transducer will produce a condition called "wraparound". Misregistration which may lead to a wraparound condition may be caused by operator error, defective masks, or non-ideal alignment tools, among other things. At the edges of the pole pieces where the wraparound occurs, the flux lines of the magnetic field produced between the two pole pieces will not be in the desired direction relative to the data track on a magnetic recording medium. Thus, during a write operation, the recording medium will not be properly magnetized at the area proximate to the wraparound, in a direction parallel to the direction of motion of the medium, but in a direction at an angle to the magnetic transitions developed by the pole pieces. This improper magnetization will not provide a significant readout signal during the read mode, particularly if the head is slightly misaligned during the read operation. In effect, the pole pieces cannot create or sense the magnetic transitions properly in the wraparound region of the pole pieces.
In some cases, particularly when the transducing gap between the pole pieces is specified to be very small, the adjacent pole pieces can magnetically short in the wraparound region, so that a proper magnetic field cannot be produced between the pole pieces. Sputtering techniques which are generally used to deposit the gap material typically leave the top corners of the first pole piece layer uncovered or with a relatively thin covering, particularly when the gap between the pole pieces is small.